Colourful bows arch across the sky,

scything wings underflow,

silhouettes of glorious won freedoms,

neath them the city’s traffic hums:

——

Bounty of joy subsumed in oily residues,

taunting the gasping, asthmatic child,

while black gold, a grim poison now

spoiling fresh air, polluting the earth.

—–

Nightly the owls hoot their warning call,

making their message clear to all

but humans cannot hear them say,

‘Oil’s turned earth to a fiery hell today’.

—–

Glistening ice, turning back the sun,

is warmed, melting dangerously soon,

if not stopped it will be a deep, deep,

blue, drawing the heat, a boiling death.

—–

Penguins flounder in their warmer home,

swallows lose their long migration tell,

birds of prey eat sickly birds and die

while the trilling wren fails to come by.

——

Birds, multi coloured, painted with care,

danced in our gardens and on their wings

but we’ve destroyed their habitat

and our own – come to that?